NVIDIA today announced Project Holodeck, a photorealistic, collaborative virtual reality environment that incorporates the feeling of real-world presence through sight, sound and haptics.

The Holodeck environment allows creators to import high-fidelity, full-resolution models into VR to collaborate and share with colleagues or friends — and make design decisions easier and faster.

Holodeck is built on an enhanced version of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 and includes NVIDIA GameWorks, VRWorks and DesignWorks, delivering unparalleled photorealism, and physics simulation in collaborative virtual reality.

Collaborating Inside a Koenigsegg Supercar

The demo took the GTC audience inside the design review of a $1.9 million Koenigsegg Regera supercar. They watched engineers in the Holodeck environment explore the car at scale and in full visual fidelity, and consult each other on design changes in real time.

Thanks to Holodeck’s high fidelity, designers can explore embedded equipment such as the instrument panel, air vents and engine components. And multiple lighting configurations can be simulated for scenarios such as day and night time driving, road conditions and weather to understand how light reflects off of windows or glass cockpits.

“No other car feels, looks or sounds like a Koenigsegg — each is an individually commissioned work of art, custom designed and engineered to our customers’ desires,” says Christian von Koenigsegg, founder of Koenigsegg Automotive AB. “The possibilities for Holodeck technology as a tool that will allow our customers to experience the bespoke nature of their vehicle before it is built are very exciting.”

Holodeck makes it easy to import and beautifully render enormous models without geometric simplification. In the case of the Koenigsegg car, the model was a jaw-dropping 50 million polygons. This means creators can skip the time spent simplifying their models for VR, and spend more time exploring them at full fidelity.

The Holodeck environment spans many possible use cases — from product designers and architects, to content creators, to enthusiasts wanting to enjoy 3D and 360-degree content with their friends in a VR space.